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Civilians complicate clearing enemy infestation from Tall Afar neighborhood

Washington Post:

On one side of the concertina wire lining an avenue stood 100 U.S. troops, five Bradley Fighting Vehicles and two M1-A1 Abrams tanks. Across the street were about 1,000 men, women and children of this embattled northwestern city.

The military had warned in leaflets dropped by helicopter and messages played over loudspeaker Tuesday morning that they would soon raid the insurgent-controlled neighborhood of Sarai, east of the city center, and asked civilians to evacuate through checkpoints in the southern part of town. But the Sarai residents, most of them Sunni Turkmens, insisted they either flee northward or remain in their homes, come what may.

On one side of the concertina wire lining an avenue stood 100 U.S. troops, five Bradley Fighting Vehicles and two M1-A1 Abrams tanks. Across the street were about 1,000 men, women and children of this embattled northwestern city.

After an eight-hour standoff marked by a cycle of negotiation, miscommunication, occasional gunfire and flashes of anger, one family, about 17 people, agreed to leave the city with a military escort, after a U.S. commander gave the crowd "one final chance." The rest retreated into Sarai, vowing to take their chances.

"A lot of people are just barricading themselves in, which is a big mistake," said Staff Sgt. George Kakeletris, a psychological operations soldier who drove a Humvee all day up and down the avenue, which the military calls Bel Air, blaring messages in Arabic from speakers mounted on the roof.

...

The evacuation of Sarai, the oldest section of Tall Afar and a web of narrow streets where fighting is expected to be difficult, was supposed to help prevent civilians from being hurt or killed during the invasion's final phase. The military strung nearly a mile of concertina wire along Bel Air, on the northern edge of the neighborhood, on Sunday to encourage people to migrate south, where it had established checkpoints to prevent insurgents from fleeing undetected. Among 200 people who followed those instructions and fled south Tuesday, soldiers discovered a man suspected of being an insurgent who was dressed as a woman, complete with prosthetic breasts.

For the military, problems began Tuesday at 8 a.m., when soldiers who had spent the night in an abandoned house awoke to about 300 Sarai residents who had picked their way across the wire and were sitting in the street outside the house, asking how they could get out of Tall Afar.

There is much more of the haggling over which direction the civilians will take to leave. For reasons that are not clear, the civilians are fearful of the Shia.